1. What’s the next step after burning mattresses? “Necklacing”?

   1

2. Andy Ngô is the only voice in national media that gets the geography of Portland correct. If he says it happened in SE Portland, than I believe him. The rest of the national news media consistently gets some very basic details wrong. For example, The Daily Caller constantly refers to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department offices inside the Kelly-Penumbra Building as being “in the suburbs,” when it’s actually inside the city and no where near the city’s edge. CNN, CBS, and the other tv networks were recently running stories about a riot at the Portland Police Bureau’s “Southeast Precinct,” and no such precinct exists.

   Here’s a very basic overview of Portland’s geography… because, as Napoleon said “Geography is destiny.”

   Portland sits in a ring of mountainous foothills, that encircle the city on three sides, like a bowl. This forms a sort of natural outer bounds for the city.

   The prime defining geographic feature of Portland’s internal layout are the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. The Willamette River runs (roughly) north-south through the middle of the city, the Columbia Rivers runs (roughly) east-west across the “top” of the city and forms the state border with Washington. Sort of like a big capital “T.” The William actually curves but, just go with this.

   Running right through the middle of the city, east-west and crossing over the Willamette River is the major roadway of Burnside Street. It crosses the Willamette via the aptly named Burnside Bridge. Forming something kind of like a “+” sign. This forms the basis for the four main quadrants of the city: Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, and Southeast.

   Due to the fact that the rivers don’t actually intersect at perfect 90° angles, Portland has a couple of extra quadrants (and yes, we’re all in on the joke about having a more than four quadrants). To the west of Northeast Portland but to the north of Northwest Portland there’s a long triangle of land formed by the two rivers: North Portland. Back in the late 19th and early to mid 20th Centuries, this was were the main shipyards (PORTland, remember?) and other industrial areas were confined. It was grimy, dingy, noisy, and the land’s usefulness for agriculture sucked… So it became “the black neighborhood” due to government and banks colluding via redlining and other forms of legitimate systemic racism. After the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the Fifties and Sixties, many black families choose to remain in the neighborhood or nearby just out of tradition. All of North Portland and the western end of Northeast Portland are still “the black neighborhood.” It’s no coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr Blvd runs along the border between the two regions or that our kids attend Harriet Tubman Junior High School…

   Then there’s the two less official quadrants: East and South. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, huge swaths of residential neighborhoods in unincorporated areas to the city’s east were annexed by the city and have largely been ignored and neglected by it ever since. Officially, everyone in East lives in Northeast or Southeast… Unofficially, everyone kinda just knows that “East” is it’s own thing. In the Seventies and Eighties, Portland’s Asian population moved, en masse, out of the Chinatown region of Northeast Portland (rents were skyrocketing in downtown) and moved into East Portland. The unofficial border between Portland and East Portland is 82nd Avenue… Think of Detroit’s Eight Mile Road if you want a rough idea. Streetwalkers, tweakers, No-Tell Motels, and used car lots of dubious reputation abound.

   Southwest Portland is home to “Old Money,” it’s where the industrial barons of our old shipbuilding glory days lived and where the lumber barons who built the city before that kept their winter residences (they summered on the coast). But the strip of Southwest that ran along the bank of the Willamette River had never really been part of Southwest’s Old Money residential neighborhood. It had been shipyards and warehouses back in the day and little used since WWII. In the Eighties and Nineties, developers looking to take advantage of the “New Money” flowing into Northwest Portland’s Old Town, Nob Hill, and Pearl Districts started erecting modern luxe high-rises and swanky condos. The city catered to them by officially rebranding this section “South” Portland… But geographically we all still think of it as Southwest and culturally it’s basically the poorer end of Northwest. “Downtown Portland” essentially runs along Burnside and straddles the border between Northwest and Southwest.

   Northwest: New Money Elite
   Southwest: Old Money Elite
   South: Wannabe New Money Yuppies
   Northeast: Gen-X Hipsters and Boomer Wine Moms
   North: Black Families and White DINKs
   Southeast: Millennial Hipsters
   East: Meth Heads and Asian Immigrants

   The Portland Police Bureau only has three precincts: North, Central, and East. The North Precinct (which I live next door to) covers North and Northeast Portland; the Central Precinct (located downtown) covers Northwest, Southwest, and South; and the East Precinct covers Southeast and East.

   All street addresses in Portland will contain the quadrant they are in (unless the address is actually on Burnside, in which case it will only be East or West). For example, my favorite 7-11 is located at 1516 NE Killingsworth Street; my favorite local game store is located at 345 SE Taylor; and my favorite local pizza place is located at 926 W Burnside.

   Also, most of the roads that run north-south will be numbered and called Avenues. The higher the number, the further away they are from the Willamette River. So 301 NW 3rd Avenue is located in downtown and quite close to the river, but 3242 NE 82nd Avenue is located out in East Portland and quite a ways from the river.

   2

   1. To amplify, the Portland street grid extends well out into the suburbs. On the West side 72nd st. is more or less the border with Beaverton and Tigard while NW 185th is the border with Hillsboro and the west end of the grid is 229th which abuts Hillsboro’s own quadrant system. Portland extends much further East, to around 162nd in Gresham while street numbers go until the Sandy River. Southeast bleeds into Clackamas while SW turns into Lake Oswego. Useful trivia for this blog, the worst piece of 2018 gun control legislation came from high school students in Lake Oswego, Gerber is on SW 72nd near I-5 and Leatherman is around NE 122nd and Airport Way near the Danner boot factory. Kershaw, CRKT and Warne scope rings are in Tualatin a few miles south of Gerber and Leupold is in NW Beaverton.

      1. And most of the time, Portland is a damn fine city to live in. It’s lefty as anything, but it’s mostly a mix of Hippie-Dippy Boomer peaceniks, thirty-something Millennials that parrot whatever today’s SJW talking point on The Daily Show is, and old school blue-collar Union Uber Alles types.

         There are honest-to-no-god communists in the city, of course, but they’re on the political fringe… most of the time. The election of Trump has allowed them four years of meme warfare. Spouting RESIST RESIST RESIST RESIST for three and a half years managed to push the local Overton Window enough that, suddenly (read: gradually) they were able to convince the Hippie-Dippy Boomers and Hipster Socialists that rioting was an acceptable activity.

         But in the recent weeks, as they’ve gone from attacking government buildings and storefronts of big corporations into attacking people in private residences? Public perceptions are beginning to shift.

         Election Night 2020 will see all hell break loose. Old Town and Pioneer Square will burn. My neighborhood, Alberta, Sabin, and Alameda will see massive property damage… But, come 2021, a lot of people are suddenly going to get selective amnesia and start to have always been against the riots.

         1

   2. I don;t think Portland is named that because it has ports. It would be “X’s Port” or something if that was the case. “Portland” is an only English placename, which was transferred to New England, along with many, many others. Then other towns in the west were renamed after the New England or colonial towns, often multiple times, either because the original inhabitants or developers were from that town, or just because they needed a name and that was on the list. Most “Springfields” have nothing to do with springs. While it is possible they specifically chose “Portland” because it had ports, I doubt it.

Comments are closed.